Chapter Four - Alberti in Bologna (c. 1421–1428?)

Summary

University experience in the 1420s resulted in two nervous breakdowns. No document attests to Alberti’s having been graduated; records are lost, rendering precise knowledge of curricula impossible. Ironically, the university’s primary endowment would be his discontent. Subsequent movement is speculation. Nonetheless, after honing rhetoric and optics – begun in Padua – Alberti finished the play Philodoxeos fabula and his confessional De commodis litterarum atque incommodis – both germane to the pursuit of glory. Visual art exposure evolved with antique motifs of Nicola Pisano and Jacopo della Quercia. Employed by Cardinal Niccol Albergati, Alberti would thence travel to northern Europe and confront the pictorial-architectural innovation there, further impacting prescriptions in De pictura.